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It's common to unite multiple independent clauses with an "and" in order to form a sentence. For example, consider a sentence that says, "The weather is warm, campsites are abundant, and insects are scarce."

I am wondering whether it is formally correct to insert elements into such a series that are not just independent clauses. Take for example this sentence in Greek Lessons by Han Kang:

After taking her seat, she got out her textbook and writing things from her bag one by one, distractedly raised her head, and their eyes met.

As I read it, this sentence connects three things:

  1. Independent clause: "she got out her textbook and writing things from her bag one by one"
  2. Fragment: "distractedly raised her head"
  3. Independent clause: "their eyes met"

Is this sentence ungrammatical? It's clear to a casual speaker that the subject of the fragment "distractedly raised her head" is the elided pronoun "she" from earlier, but is it acceptable to make such an elision in this sentence structure? As I see it, the sentence should make each element of the series act as an independent clause.

Modified: After taking her seat, she got out her textbook and writing things from her bag one by one, [she] distractedly raised her head, and their eyes met.

I see how the exclusion of "she" in the original version of the sentence mimics casual speech, but is it formally correct? If the original version is correct, what kind of rules are there for the way different kinds of phrases can be mixed in a series?

will
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    I don't think you can speak of fragment. Omission as characteristic of fragments and omission due to ellipsis are two different things: fragments consist in incorrect sentences whereas ellipses do not. After taking her seat, she got out her textbook and writing things from her bag one by one, she distractedly raised her head, and their eyes met. – LPH May 16 '23 at 19:47
  • You can argue whether it's good style but English allows a lot of omissions of elements. What do you mean by "is it grammatical?"? English grammar isn't like verifying the correctness of a C program where you can run it through a parser and get a definitive yes or no answer. There is probably a more elegant way of putting it (e.g. better parallelism), but it's not clearly ungrammatical, but someone might take objection to it and mark you down if they would prefer you wrote in short, clear sentences. – Stuart F May 16 '23 at 20:11
  • If you imagine an elliptical and (with a comma marking its absence), it kinda works structurally: After taking her seat, she got out her textbook and writing things from her bag one by one [and] distractedly raised her head, and their eyes met. – Tinfoil Hat May 16 '23 at 23:37
  • Broadly, that depends on the content and the given example suggests no, it can't.

    'After taking her seat, she got out her textbook and writing things from her bag one by one, distractedly raised her head, and their eyes met' might be a fine example in another language but in English, it simply doesn't serve.

    Is that surprising, given that neither 'Greek Lessons' nor 'Han Kang' are English?

     – Robbie Goodwin Sep 16 '23 at 18:35

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